A hairline crack lets water reach the stone base. Water softens the base, the pavement flexes and the crack widens. Repeated freezing and thawing force it farther apart until alligator cracking and potholes appear. That structural damage can cost many times more than filling the original crack.
We remove vegetation and debris, dry the crack and inject hot rubberized filler that bonds to both walls and flexes with the pavement as temperatures change. Pourable products from the hardware store often shrink and come loose within a winter. Professionally applied hot rubber is made to hold.
Crack filling pairs naturally with sealcoating — fill first, seal over — but it also stands alone as the single most urgent fix for any pavement showing open joints heading into an Ohio winter.